Bud Matthews Services Blog

There are a number of important plumbing fixtures in your home that demand fast attention when something goes wrong with them. The bathroom toilet is probably the most prominent—when a toilet won’t work, or is leaking or overflowing, it’s something you’ll want to have repaired immediately. Unless the issue is a simple one (and we’ll look at some examples), you’ll need to call a plumber in Chapel Hill, NC to repair it. A professional plumber, not just a “handyman” who has a few different sizes of plungers and a hand-cranked drain snake. You can’t afford to take chances with this vital part of your home’s plumbing, so only work with a licensed plumber.

We know the weather is still warm, but it’s already time to consider your home’s central heating—because soon it will be one of the most crucial systems in your house. We strongly advise you have regular maintenance for your heater with our technicians. We make it simple with our HVAC maintenance agreement. Once you have this service completed, your home’s heating system has the best chance of running through the winter without major problems.

However, maintenance cannot stop all problems, particularly for an old heating system. One trouble you may run into is uneven heating around your home. Family members may start to complain about their rooms feeling too cold, while elsewhere you may encounter rooms becoming too stuffy. Why does this happen? There are several possible explanations.

I guess we gave the whole game away in the title! But you aren’t reading our blog for suspense thrillers with big twists at the end—you want to know how best to take care of your HVAC equipment, and we’re here to help. We’ll assist with any HVAC services in Hillsborough, NC you may need, including for your heating system. But right now, we want to concentrate on the air conditioner, which is coming to the end of its season of heavy work. The cool weather is coming, and it’s time to set up the winter vacation plans for the air conditioner.

You want your family to have clean drinking water—it’s the least you can expect from the water in your home! But sometimes water treatment systems are necessary, such as water purifiers and filters.

But what about the pipes in your house? We often hear questions from our customers about whether their pipes may be adding toxins into the water supply. Plastic pipes are becoming more common for both hot and cold water lines carrying fresh water, and we’re going to take a look at any safety concerns your home’s plumbing may have.

Once upon a time, homeowners had few choices when it came to new water heater installations. Everyone used storage tank water heaters, and that was that.

But now we live in times when homeowners can select water heaters with better energy efficiency, such as the tankless water heater and the heat pump water heater.

Just because new choices exist, however, doesn’t mean they’re the right choices for everyone. A heat pump water heater, for example, won’t work for all homes. If you’re curious about whether your home meets the conditions for an effective and energy-saving heat pump water heater, we can help you out with the facts.

With the weather so hot at summer’s end, everything is in danger of possibly overheating—including your air conditioner. Air conditioning systems are designed to operate in hot weather. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be much use to anyone. But the extra load of work, combined with all the strain and wear the AC has accumulated already during May, June, and July, can cause the motors or other components to overheat.

If your air conditioner stops cooling or its fan breaks, call for a Cary, NC, HVAC contractor to get the issue fixed. Any air conditioning technician worth calling knows all the different reasons why a cooling system might fail toward the end of the summer. Below we’ve listed a few of the most common ones that we see when we’re helping rescue ACs in August and September:

You probably aren’t aware of this, but a large part of the plumbing for your house is located down in the concrete foundation slab. It’s an easy way to pipe water into the house, and it keeps the pipes out of the way. But it doesn’t necessarily keep them out of the way of harm. If your home has hot and cold water pipes down in its foundation, the house is at risk of slab leaks at some point. And slab leaks are costly, wasteful, and can even create health troubles due to mold growth.

You’ve got something wrong with the sewer line for your home. Maybe multiple drains are blocked or bad smells are wafting from sinks around the house. The sewer line probably needs to be cleaned out to restore your home’s drainage system. Here are the tools you’ll need to clean the sewer line:

The sump pump is one of the most useful plumbing appliances for a home. It’s also an appliance that homeowners hope they don’t actually have to use often, since it’s there in cases of emergencies when water floods down into the basement or the crawlspace or when excess moisture builds up. Sump pumps are helpful during the stormy season, but they’re invaluable all around the year for when a major plumbing leak strikes and sends water cascading down into the basement of a house. The pump turns on automatically and starts removing the excess water—

—except when the pump is broken. It can happen, especially if the pump hasn’t needed to be used for a number of seasons. You’ll need sump pump repairs fast if it doesn’t work.

How much do you run your air conditioner during the summer? You might say, “All the time,” but you know that’s an exaggeration. On hot days it may feel like you have to keep the air conditioner’s compressor running continually to keep you cool, but the compressor of an air conditioner is designed to go through cycles as it lowers the indoor temperature to meet the setting on the thermostat. You should hear the compressor turn on and off a few times during a hot day.

If the air conditioning compressor really is running nonstop, then there’s something wrong with it. There are a range of possibilities, and we’ll look at a few of the most common. If you do need air conditioning repair in Chapel Hill, NC, you can reach our professionals 24/7 for the fast service necessary to get you cool again.